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Your Proofness: Sarah Munir Master Storyteller: Nudrat Kamal Creativity Analysts: Jamal Khurshid, d, Essa Malik, Talha Ahmed Khan, Munira Abbas, Omer Asim and Umar Waqas
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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
Hi light
2 We all have happy memories of trips to amusement parks. Piling into cars, elbowing our siblings and cousins out of the way as we race towards the ticket booth, arguing over cotton candy and which ride to try first. Amusement parks are filled with all kinds of fun and excitement. Trips to amusement parks are something people of all ages can enjoy, ensuring that mom and dad won’t be suppressing their bored sighs while the kids have all the fun. Parents, too, can join right in. Amusement parks are also where you can get a healthy dose of thrills — there are heart-stopping roller coasters, huge Ferris wheels and tall rides which dangle you dozens of feet in the air and then drop you right to the ground. Read on to find out all about amusement parks.
People have wanted to be entertained ever since the dawn of mankind. It’s just that the ways of getting this entertainment have changed over centuries. The idea of amusement parks evolved from the concept of fairs and pleasure gardens that were popular since as far back as the 12th century Europe. In these fairs and pleasure gardens, one could view acrobatics, magic shows and juggling, and take part in all sorts of competitions. As technology advanced, these fairs started featuring fancier things — hot air balloon ascents, fireworks displays and more. Then the merry-go-round was developed in the 19th century, and joy rides became a regular feature of these pleasure gardens, which were now called amusement parks. Today, the world’s oldest amusement park that is still open is the Bakken (The Hill), a park located in Denmark. The Bakken opened in 1583, which makes it more than 400 years old.
The entrance to the Bakken, the oldest amusement park in the world.
The Bakken in the 19th century.
When Disneyland Park opened in California, USA, in 1955, it changed amusement parks forever. It was an instant hit, and it raised people’s expectations about what an amusement park should have. Visitors were no longer satisfied with only a few rides on a field near a lake. They wanted a whole world to themselves. This was because Disneyland had taken the concept of amusement parks to a whole new level — it was a theme park. A theme park is a specialised form of amusement park. It has buildings, rides and attractions based around one or more themes. Disneyland’s theme was, of course, Disney films. Disneyland has eight themed lands, including Fanstasyland and Adventureland. It has castles of all the Disney princesses and elaborate rides based on all our favourite Disney movies. The entrance to Disneyland Park, California, USA.
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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
Hi light
Roller coasters have a long and fascinating history. Their predecessors were these monumental ice slides — long, steep wooden slides covered in ice, some as high as 70 feet — that were popular in Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Riders shot down the slides in sleds made out of wood or blocks of ice, crash-landing in a pile of sand. Exactly how these ice slides led to rolling carts careening down a track is something we aren’t sure of. The most popular theory is that the idea was eventually taken from the Russians by the French. Since France has a warmer climate, the ice slides would melt, so instead they made waxed slides with rolling carts. The world’s first roller coaster was the ‘Russes à Belleville’ (Russian Mountains of Belleville), built in France in 1817. Today, roller coasters have complicated designs and are getting faster and scarier. But the science behind them is actually quite simple. These rides use the force of gravity and the energy of the roller coaster itself and use that to make a fun and thrilling experience. You might have noticed that roller coasters always start by moving slowly upwards. The purpose of this ascent is to build up a reservoir of potential energy. This energy is collected as you go higher — the higher you are, the more gravity will forcefully pull you towards the earth. Then when the roller coaster goes downhill, gravity turns all that potential energy into kinetic energy, giving the roller coaster its speed.
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A roller coaster in a Californian amusement park.
In July 2010, Potterheads (the nickname given to Harry Potter fans) all over the world had their dreams come true when a Harry Potter theme park opened in Florida, USA. The park’s main attraction is Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which exists within a recreation of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It takes riders on a journey through Harry Potter’s wizarding world. There are also more conventional rides, like inverted roller coasters. The park also features a re-creation of Hogsmeade containing many shops and restaurants from the Harry Potter books including Dervish and Banges, Honeydukes, Ollivanders, Zonko’s Joke Shop, the Three Broomsticks and the Hog’s Head. The second portion of the park opened earlier this year, and it includes a replica of the Hogwarts Express taking guests between the two lands as well as an elaborate roller coaster ride called Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.
Hill Park, Karachi: Built inside one of the biggest and oldest parks in the city, the Hill Park amusement park has many thrilling rides, including a roller coaster, a free fall ride and the magic flying carpet. Joyland, Lahore: Established in 1977, this is one of the largest recreation parks of Lahore. Spread across six acres, it contains exciting rides and even a scary haunted house.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Jungle World, Rawalpindi: This amusement park has the advantage of being an animal theme park and is located inside the Ayub National Park, also one of the country’s biggest zoos. Go Aish, Karachi: This park is different from the usual amusement parks. Instead of regular rides, it has adventure-themed activities including paintballing, rope climbing and bungee jumping.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
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Cool facts about asteroids
Why was the clock in trouble during reading class? It tocked too much.
Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up on its own? It was two-tired.
Asteroids are small solar system bodies that orbit the sun. Made of rock and metal, they can also contain organic compounds (some scientists suggest that asteroids could have brought the necessary chemicals to start life on Earth). Ceres, is both the first and largest asteroid to be discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi. It is the closest asteroid to the sun and encompasses over one-third of the estimated total mass of all the asteroids in the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt lies roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in the solar system. It is home to a large amount of irregular shaped asteroids that range in size from tiny dust-sized bodies to the large asteroid Ceres.
What’s more amazing than a talking dog? A spelling bee.
What did the doctor say to the invisible man? I’m sorry, I can’t see you right now.
Why do bees have sticky hair? Because they use honeycombs.
Why was the man running around his bed? He wanted to catch up on his sleep.
If all of the asteroids were combined into a ball, they would still be much smaller than Earth’s moon. If the sun was as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel, the moon would be about as big as a green pea and Ceres (the largest object in the main asteroid belt) would be as small as a sesame seed. It is believed by many scientists and researchers that an asteroid impact was the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. Asteroids are similar to comets but do not have a visible coma (fuzzy outline and tail) like comets do. There have been many ideas suggested as ways to avoid the unlikely but potentially devastating impact of an asteroid collision with Earth. These include using nuclear explosions to break the asteroid into smaller pieces or other weapons to deflect it.
Did you know? Who is Humpty Dumpty? As many of you may have noticed, nowhere in the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ rhyme does it say that Humpty is an egg. But still, almost all depictions of the character in pictures and stories show him to be an egg. How did we collectively start picturing Humpty as an egg? The first time the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ rhyme was published was in 1797 in a book called Juvenile Amusements by Samuel Arnold. These publications did not include the first use of the term ‘humpty dumpty’, though. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘humpty dumpty’ was first used in the 17th century and referred to brandy boiled with ale. In the 1700s, it was also a term used to describe a short, clumsy person. Because the nursery rhyme seems to tell a story, many people today believe that there is more meaning to it than is given in the lyrics. One popular theory is that Humpty Dumpty refers to a king in England called Richard III, who was sitting on his horse during a battle when he fell down and was hacked into pieces by the opposing army. People say that the wall in the nursery rhyme actually refers to Richard III’s horse. But even though this makes for a compelling story, there isn’t much evidence to back it up. In fact, Richard III’s remains were recently discovered, and they indicate that he was killed from a head wound, not by breaking into pieces. Most historians today believe that the rhyme was originally intended to be a riddle, with the answer of the riddle being an egg (something which cannot be put together again if it falls and breaks). Today, the answer is so well known that the character of Humpty Dumpty has taken on the appearance of an egg and the rhyme is not considered to be a riddle at all, but a story.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny news from across the globe!
Gaming to preserve a culture The Iñupiat are the native people of Alaska, the snow and ice-filled state of USA. For thousands of years, the Iñupiat have passed on their culture to their children through stories. But today, with the Iñupiat youth living modern lives, there is a danger of them becoming disconnected with their culture. To stop that from happening, an organisation has come up with an innovative way to familiarise Iñupiat kids with their culture and stories — by developing a video game. “We all agreed that, if done well, a video game had the best chance of connecting Native youth with their cultural heritage,” said Amy Fredeen, the head of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council. The game is called Never Alone and its players assume the dual roles of a girl named Nuna and her pet arctic fox. Both characters have a different set of skills, and the pair must work together to overcome obstacles on a journey that mirrors the one taken by a character in a famous Iñupiat legend. The legend is a story about a boy called Kunuuksaayuka, who goes on a journey to investigate the cause of a fierce blizzard that is destroying his hometown. It is hoped that the video game, recently released in Xbox, PlayStation and PC format, will allow players to understand the rich Iñupiat culture. NEWYORKER.COM
Tortoises saved They were down to only 15 about 50 years ago, but now they have been saved. Giant tortoises. which were commonly found in the Galapagos Islands are back from near extinction. The Espanola giant tortoises, a species that can live for over 100 years, had numbered in the thousands but dropped to 15 by 1960 due to human exploitation, according to a recently published study. Between 1963 and 1974, conservationists brought the 12 female and three male surviving giant tortoises into captivity. Over 1,500 of their offspring have since been released onto the island, and the species’ survival no longer requires human intervention, scientists said. “The population is secure. It’s a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction,” said James P Gibbs, the study’s lead author and a professor of at the State University of New York’s Environmental Science and Forestry, in a press release. TIME.COM
World wide weird
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A chocolate emergency
Two of the world’s biggest chocolate-making companies, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut, have delivered devastating news — the world is running out of chocolate. For several years now, the world has been running a chocolate deficit. This means that not enough cocoa beans are being farmed to cover the growing demand of chocolate. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tonnes more cocoa than it produced. If we keep consuming more chocolate than we produce, eventually the chocolate we have saved up will finish. Experts believe that this trend will likely continue unless the world produces more chocolate. One reason for this deficit is that dry weather in West Africa, where more than 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced, has greatly decreased production in the region. While, the world’s demand for chocolate keeps growing, chocolate companies have come up with a solution to this problem. Specifically, an agricultural research group in Central Africa is developing trees that can produce up to seven times the amount of beans traditional cocoa trees can. But the downside is that these cocoa beans don’t taste as good as regular ones. INDEPENDENT.CO.UK
Museum of craziness Srunken heads. Tiger skeletons. Celebrity poo. These are just a few of the bizarre items on display at the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London. Owned and curated by artist and collector Viktor Wynd, the small museum contains, as Getty Images photographer Peter Macdiarmid puts it, “an eclectic mix of anything and everything that Viktor has taken a liking to.” The museum features the feces of deceased pop star Amy Winehouse, the skeletons of two-headed animals and prints by famous painter, Pablo Picasso. The museum is both a tribute to the eccentricities of bygone eras and a commentary on today’s consumer culture. It is cluttered and haphazard and is supposed to be an act of rebellion against the modern time’s emphasis on order and tidiness. Among the strange things displayed is a skeleton of a two-headed kitten, a mummified dancing rat and a stuffed lion wearing a red top hat. MIC.COM
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
Reading corner
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Ghost Education Imagine that the school you were enrolled in was a ghost school, and that your teacher was a ghost teacher. Sounds like something out of a horror movie, right? For a lot of children in the country, it is actually a reality. Ghost schools are those schools which are supposed to exist — official documents state that the school exists — but don’t. The teachers who are supposed to teach at in these schools o don’t ever show up to teach. They stay at home and get their salaries, which the government sends to them after deducting it from the taxes that citizens pay. These ghost schools are sometimes empty ’t buildings pretending to be schools but which are being used for other purposes. Sometimes there isn’t even a building — the schools only exist on paper. This is a big problem for a lot of children who live in ls small towns as it is difficult to keep a check on schools in far-flung areas. The problem of ghost schools n Sindh alone. According to is a big in Pakistan — it is said that there are almost 7,000 ghost schools and 40,000 ghost teachers in a news report published in The Express Tribune on 20th November 2014, smart and proactive citizens of the country are doing o Pakistani children, these something about this problem. Since, these ghost schools and teachers are doing a great disservice to people have turned to social media to find out who these ghost teachers are, so that authorities can take action against them. he groups’ pages, and this data Facebook groups invite people from all over Sindh to identify the ghost teachers of their district on the is then given to the government which has promised to take strict action against them.
Books with great film adaptations Don’t you just hate it when your favourite book gets made into a movie, and you look forward to it for ages and then when you finally watch it, it turns out that the movie completely failed to capture the book’s awesomeness? More often than not, film adaptations of books are a letdown. It’s hard to translate a world created purely out of the author’s words into a two-hour movie. But sometimes, the universe can surprise you with great adaptations of beloved books. Here are a few films that managed to capture the magic of the books they were based on: The Secret Garden The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a classic children’s novel about Mary, an angry girl who has to live at her distant uncle’s huge estate and one day discovers a secret, overgrown garden that she adopts as her own. With the help of her friend Dikon and her sickly cousin Colin, Mary makes the garden beautiful again and in doing so, changes the lives of everyone around her. It is hard to capture the mystery and beauty of this garden and its caretakers, but the film does a wonderful job. Matilda Matilda by Roald Dahl is a wonderful book about a young girl who is exceptionally smart, reads a lot and has the ability to move things with her eyes. She uses this power to teach the grownups around her (such as her mean principal) the lessons they need. The book is funny and heartwarming and the film lives up to the book’s high standards by bringing Matilda’s story to life. With the characters cast exactly as you would imagine them to be in the book, and sticking faithfully close to the book’s events, Matilda is a film worth watching.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret Hugo is an orphan and a thief lives who in the walls of a busy train station. When his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo’s undercover life (and his most precious secret) is put in jeopardy. Told in a book which is half novel, half comic book, with lots of pictures, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick tells an exciting adventure story in a unique way. The movie, titled Hugo is in 3D and retains the magic and wonder of the original tale.
Holes Holes by Louis Sachar is a quirky and strange book, mixing elements of fantasy, history and comedy together. It is about Stanley Yalnets, a boy whose family has been cursed with bad luck for centuries. It is bad luck that sends Stanley to a detention camp for boys where they have to dig holes every day. The warden claims that this exercise is for building character but Stanley knows there is more to the truth. He has to figure out the mystery and find out what it has to do with his family curse. The movie based on the book is equally quirky, strange and fun.
How to Train Your Dragon Most people don’t know this, but How to Train Your Dragon — the popular animated franchise — is actually based on a series of books written by Cressida Cowell. Although the movies somewhat change the plot of the book series, they retain the fun and charm that is present in them. Chronicling the adventures of a young boy named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the first book in the series shows him becoming a hero by trying to train a dragon called Toothless — and this training isn’t as simple as yelling at it to do things. Both the book series as well as the movies are worth checking out.
Do you have a favourite book or movie you would like us to review? Write to us at hifive@tribune.com.pk and tell us all about it.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
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Artwork
Tehreem Winner
Notable Entries for the Liberty Books Cards Competition
Riva Khan
Abdul Basit
Abdul Mateen
Atif Ali Winner
Ammar Umar Shaik
Bilal Rehman
Faisal Khan
Jibran Khan
Kantesh
Avinash
Husnain
Fazal Karim
Misbah Ahmed
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 23, 2014
You will need: • Skimmed milk • Vinegar • Microwave-proof bowl • Strainer/sieve What to do: 1. Add four teaspoons of vinegar to one and a half cups of skimmed milk. 2. Microwave the mixture for about a minute or heat over a stove to warm. 3. After a minute, the milk and vinegar will separate into a liquid part (the whey) and a solid part (the curd).
You will need: Cornstarch Granulated sugar Cocoa powder Salt Heavy cream Milk Eggs Semisweet chocolate chips Pure vanilla extract
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2 tablespoons 5 tablespoons 2 tablespoons 1/8 teaspoon 1 cup 1 1/4 cups 2 large 1 1/4 cups 1 teaspoon
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4. Now when you stir the milk, the solids will become blobs. 5. Strain the liquid off and squeeze the blobs into one big lump. Squeeze out all the leftover liquid. 6. Let it cool off and then you can play with it. It feels like rubber. You can form the blob into shapes. If you leave it out, it will harden.
• In a heavy-bottom, medium-sized saucepan, whisk together cornstarch, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. • Add the cream, milk and eggs. Whisk until combined. • Stir in the chocolate chips. • Set the pan over medium heat. Whisk slowly and constantly for seven to eight minutes, making sure to scrape sides of pan, just until the pudding begins to boil. • A grown-up should remove the saucepan from heat and then transfer the pudding mixture to a medium bowl. • Make an ice bath by filling a large bowl with ice and a little water. Set the bowl of pudding in the ice and stir the pudding for five minutes until it starts to cool. Stir in the vanilla. • Cover the pudding with plastic and refrigerate it until thick and chilled. Enjoy! MARTHASTEWART.COM
Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start. It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.
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What is happening: Here’s what happened to the milk — the vinegar is an acid, and when you added it to the milk, you create a chemical reaction which causes the milk to separate into two parts, a solid (the curds) and a liquid (the whey). This process is called curdling or coagulation. The heat from the microwave or stove also helps in this process. The heart activates an enzyme called rennet which is found in the milk itself and this enzyme helps the milk to curdle. The protein in the curds is what makes it act like rubber. Fun fact: If you don’t separate the curd and the whey, and instead refrigerate the mixture, eventually cheese will be formed. In fact, cheeses are prepared through this process. SCIENCEBOB.COM